The Proof Of The Pudding, Is In The Reading

When I was training to become an engineer, one of my fabrication tutors drummed into all of us students, the dictum, “measure twice – cut once”. That was sound advice and even now I still adhere to it, though thankfully, I am no longer an engineer.

That basic principal applies to the blog writing process. Though the wording needs to be changed slightly to, read twice – post once, or even, read thrice – post once. I learned the hard way yesterday, that exhaustive proof reading is essential before pressing the ‘Publish’ button.

I needed to print out all the ‘Beyond 1984’ posts published so far (with relief, not many).  Reading the resulting hard copies, I was shocked to find the writing full of errors. Not just the odd spelling mistake, but lots of repetition, loose sentences, poor punctuation, which I should have noticed during proofreading. Unfortunately, what proofreading I did do was done, ‘soft’, on the computer. I admit to being a relatively novice blog-writer, so I might have a case for claiming inexperience as the cause. That doesn’t sit well with me though. I was trained as an engineer to do things right the first time, and having to revisit posts following publication is a dismal, salutary experience.

What I seem to be suffering from is ‘computer blindness’. Mistakes that leap off the page of a hard copy are seemingly camouflaged when viewed on a computer screen. So well hidden are they that even repeated ‘soft’ proof reading doesn’t reveal them. Forgive me if I am describing what all blog authors already know, but I’ve realised that, for me, there’s only one reliable way to avoid publishing mistakes, proof read a hard copy. Print the darn things out double-spaced and redline the mistakes. It’s the only safe way, and is what I’ll be doing from now on, including this post!

Of course, I realize that the above will not cure my lack of literary expertise, but I should be able to eradicate avoidable errors. In due course, with practice, my blog-writing skill should improve, and I’m going to continue working hard to achieve that. In the meantime, I’ll be doing my best to make sure that, at the very least, what I do write is largely error-free.

Ian.